DECONSTRUCTING SANDI THOM! (with a hammer!)
Just occasionally, you get my thoughts on musical appreciation, when a
REALLY GREAT bangin' chune comes on the old radio. You all fondly recall
when I said what a good chap and great tunester that Bryan Adams was.
Something about sharp carving knives (to use on him) and sick-buckets (If I
can't cope anymore) got into the article at some point.
Since then, things have got worse, a lot worse...
Just lately, a young lady with a guitar and faux Joni Mitchell vocal
delivery has been coming to my notice. Well I've not been given the choice
with the usual practice of playlisting by bovine deejay's told by the record
label to hype the next 'big thing'. Actually I've been keeping my radio
listening to a minimum since she released or "escaped" this song. This next
"Big thing" is a heartfelt plea for authenticity, apparently.
I'm talking about Sandi Thom, a young lady born in 1981, waxing nostalgic
about a time before she was born in a song called "I Wish I Was A PunkRocker (With Flowers In My Hair)", and doing it lazily (but we'll get to
that shortly), and making out that she's a poor struggling artiste. when in
reality, her rise to power is slightly less spontaneous and casual than
a summer picnic organised by Simon Cowell and Alan Sugar.

"Stop singing, it makes people happy!"
I'm reproducing and commenting on the lyrics on a verse by verse basis,
there is SO much wrong here, I hardly know where to start.
I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)
"Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair, In 77 and 69revolution was in the air,I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair."
This is the chorus, with the song title, the oft-repeated thematic glue that
holds the rest of it together.The first thing that struck me was that I don't
remember Punks and Hippies ever getting on with each other. In fact my
"actually being alive in 1977 memory" recalls the punk movement was
violently opposed to the peace and love part of the hippie agenda. If
hippies were organised enough to have an agenda, which in Ms Thom's enclosed
world in her head, they probably, depressingly, would be. It's a case of
lazily mixing two distinct and different periods of youth rebellion into
one, in some marketing jargon bollocks called "Fusion revolution" or
something. I bet there's some record company fuckhead who's actually come up
with that as a catchphrase, and he's very pleased with himself for it.
Bastard!
There's more sarcastic gold to be mined from the rest of the chorus, but it
can wait!
There's always this version ;-)
_____________________________ ,____ , . :' ':
\ \ | _.;..;._ | Oh I wish I was a seventies |
\ _ \ _ \ _ / __ __ \ | botherer, without a clue |
'_' '_' '_' )<@.||.@>: / in my head! |
\ Oo / //:._____________________________.:
('<__>') //
* _ '-\__/-' _ / /--X / \ X--\ /| \ \ / / | [], || ,[] ' []| '' |[] | []'~~~[]~~~'[] | /> \ /\ / <\ | | | | | | '=' '=' ------~~~~---- === ---- /_/ ---\_\ -----~~~~-------~~~~-----
Ok, first verse coming up...
"When the head of state didn't play guitar, Not everybody drove a car, Whenmusic really mattered and when radio was king, When accountants didn't havecontrol, And the media couldn't buy your soul, And computers were stillscary and we didn't know everything."
The first line is a bit I can agree with, "When the head of state didn'tplay guitar". That's Mr Tony smugly smiley Blair she's on about. But saying
that, she's set herself against the baby boomer generation she admires so
much, of which Mr Blair is a part, who are clinging to their youth, failing
to grow up, and destroying the utopian dream in the process. So I guess this
song is a subtle satire telling the more astute listener, that the Boomers
fucked things up bigtime for the people after. On the other hand, I've got
the horrible feeling she's playing it totally straight and there's NO hidden
meaning in there!
"When music really mattered", yes it's really horrible being alive now, when
there's lots of different artistic and cultural things in all sorts of
different media going on. I've always found people "Into music" and nothing
else to be a bit one-dimensional and obsessive.
As for the bits about accountants and media, which bit of the sixties and
seventies did accountants not have control over? Ooh, that must be, erm,
none of it! And the media, sorry, always shitting on people they don't like!
The last line makes me laugh, ooh, scary computers the size of a house, with
big banks of tape reels showering sparks over men in white lab coats, and
powered by steam! So she's rubbishing a gadget which has really changed some
things for the better. Perhaps the real "Scary Computers" are the servers
which made her webcasts, and subsequent rise to national annoyance possible
in the first place?!
And quite without warning, here she is again.
"Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair, In 77 and 69revolution was in the air,I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair."
Second iteration of annoying chorus, and we're on the subject of the
respective dress codes of Punks vs Hippies. I really don't remember any
punks with flower in their hair. Spit in their hair, yes. I think if someone
calling themselves "punk" in 1977 had been caught with flowers in their
hair, the following might have happened.
THIS IS PURELY CONJECTURAL, BUT QUITE LIKELY..Real Punk - "Oi, you wiv' the flowers in yer hair! You takin' the piss orwot!?"Sandi - "Oh I wish I was a Punk Rocker with Flowers in my hair.."Real Punk - "Right, cummere you sad git!" - THUMP!! KICK!!
Ready for the next verse yet? Oh well, here it comes anyway...
"When popstars still remained a myth, And ignorance could still be bliss,And when God Save the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale, When my momand dad were in their teens, And anarchy was still a dream, And the only wayto stay in touch was a letter in the mail."
This next verse is in the bollocks superleague. For the first line, actually
I'm sure we're all better off now that Gary Glitter has been "de-mythed" as
someone who would shag anything impressionable and underage. the music biz
seems to attract a lot of dodgy people in a flies to a shit-pile scenario!
I'm also personally relieved that the days of hanging onto every utterance
from these twat-merchants, as if they were living gods who had to be obeyed,
has passed by too. It's quite liberating to be able to make fun of people
like Elton John and Bono. which is one of the really great things of 21st
century life!
And no way can ignorance be bliss. Unless you are a blindfolded Sandi Thom,
cunningly released onto a motor vehicle superhighway, with a forty tonne hgv
stuffed with cheapo dvd players and illegal immigrants bearing down on her
in an out of control and brakes failed fashion!
The third line with 'God save the queen' makes no sense at all. She might
well turn a 'whiter shade of pale' if she was in 1976 and was able to see
into the future and what a great job her family made of it? We waft through
the lightly platitudinous next couple of lines, to where "the only way tostay in touch was a letter in the mail." So that's harking back to when the
only option was the post office, which was even more up its own arse than
now, with the sort of customer "service" which involved treating their
captive sheep like shit and being on strike most of the time!
And what's with this "Mom and dad" business, sounds a bit Americanised to
me? Sounds like a precalculated attempt to break into the US market, and not
at all homespun and authentic really, doesn't it!
"Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair, In 77 and 69revolution was in the air,I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair."
Chorus again, she's sounding more and more like an episode of "Grumpy youngwomen", isn't she? "Bahh, I preferred the olden days, huge shirt collars,casual homophobia, 'Love thy Neighbour' on the tele, and those crap boxycars with the life expectancy of a Kinder egg. It's all the fault of thenig-nogs! We need a good war to sort them out!" Never mind, here's a parody
that someone else did, which is much better.
"i wish i was a caveman with mud in my hair. you could get a dinosaur steakfor fifty pence. the only way to communicate was by smoke-signals andgrunts. the kids were wearing hand-me-down animal skins and kicking skullsaround."
Ok, fun part over, we're back to the real thing (depressingly).
"When record shops were on top, and vinyl was all that they stocked, and thesuper info-highway was still drifting out in space, kids were wearing hand-me-downs, And playing games meant kick arounds, And footballers who had longhair and dirt across their face."
She's having a go at the good old internets now. That must be some different
internets, from the internets that she used to webcast and self-promote
with. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. But if there was no
internets, there would be no Sandi Thom, ooh, that's a bastard dilemma! Tell
you what, let's keep the internets, we can always drown her warbly weedy
whining out if you pump up the volume on Nectarine to eleven!
And record shops, I remember them, even back then, being divided into a
handful of ok-ish independents who were open for about a day and a half per
week, and a heck of a lot of pisspoor large chains, plugging for all they
were worth what they were told to sell by "The Man".
Another forum correspondent was moved to say that this song had stopped them
from buying vinyl forever! Which is as fair a comment as you can get.
There are still kids games going on in the street, just that 'kick arounds'
are done to people, and not footballs! And the whole episode filmed for
later amusement on the latest Nokia of course!
And as for footballers, you might find a lot of them still have weird stupid
hair nowadays, but not necessarily in a nasty Kevin Keegan mullet style
anymore.
"Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair, In 77 and 69revolution was in the air,I was born too late to a world that doesn't care,Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair. I was born too lateto a world that doesn't care, Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers inmy hair."
It's the end chorus now, the pain relief is close to hand, and a nagging
thought finally reaches full clarity and bursts through my subconcious. Why
doesn't the girl stop whining about a golden age which has been and gone,
and was probably overrated to begin with. In fact, why not get on with doing
your own thing, and.....
MAKE A SUBCULTURE OF YOUR OWN!! (and make sure it is completely original,
and not referring to something else done already..)
STOP LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF YOUR PARENTS GENERATION'S SUPPOSED GREATNESS!
(If they were so great, well why are you prattling on about how crap things
are right now? Maybe they had something to do with that?!)
AND CEASE THIS POINTLESS WHINING NOW!! (Ahh, it is *profitable* whining, I
see...)
And one final (20th June) note, THANK YOU to Nelly Furtado, for knocking
this misery-heap off the top of the singles chart.You can have my babies for
carrying out that single selfless action! Whaddya mean "no"?!

Nelly Furtado loses a bet not to laugh out loud when reading Sandi Thom'slyrics!CiH, for Alive Mag, June '06..